The Marauders: A Tribute
by MetalCloud
Summary: The title kind of explains it all, doesn't it? My first venture into the world of Harry Potter fanfiction. Please read and review.


A/N: Yay, my first Harry Potter fic! So, it's probably crap, but I'm still getting used to writing as these characters. Give me time. I'll get there. Hopefully.

Okay, enough of me being silly. Anyway, after re-reading the _Deathly Hallows_ for the thirteenth time (not that I'm obsessed or anything), I decided I needed to write some sort of tribute to that fantastic quartet, (drum roll please) the Marauders. Cause they're all dead now! Wah!!! Goes off to wail in a corner for a bit Okay I'm back. So. Please read my little one-shot. I've done a sort of mini-tribute for each Marauder (though some came out longer than others), in order of death. Then I've just summed them up at the end.

The Marauders

A Tribute

_I solemnly swear that I am up to no good_

Prongs:

The loved one.

It was the first one anyone would notice about this messy-haired boy glasses. He radiated it almost palpably, as though being loved and cared for like he so obviously was gave him a glow, a shine, that glitter that raised him just that little higher.

Of course, being well loved didn't make him perfect, far from it. He was arrogant, self-confident, a pain in the butt really. Lets not fool ourselves here. He was talented, and he knew it. He was also proud, and honourable. People would tell you that for nothing. Moony claimed that Prongs would see it "the height of dishonour" to mistrust one of his friends.

He had a son with the woman he loved. And he made a promise. His son would grow up just as loved as Prongs himself had been. He would be cared for and adored, and loved with every fibre of Prongs's being. His son would know all these things, be aware of his father's love for him every day. Prongs had sworn this to himself when he first looked down at the child, _his_ child.

Then he was dead. Betrayed. Murdered protecting the woman who had claimed to hate him five years ago. Protecting his son. His mirror image. The boy who stole his face.

He survived through that boy too.

Padfoot:

The convict.

This boy was just plain handsome. Girls would call him cute and squeal excitedly if he ever smiled at them. The Gryffindor heartthrob. The bad boy.

He was also the black sheep or his family. No pun intended.

His friends were often the cause of his problems with his family actually, which was ironic in a morbid sort of way. His parents, pure-bloods and proud, were horrified at the idea that their eldest son and heir to the Black name had been sorted into _Gryffindor_, and made friends with a blood-traitor and a werewolf.

Padfoot went out of his way to annoy his parents, and always had done, but it seemed to intensify with his realisation that he had friends who would die for him. He'd never had friends before. He'd had people his age that he'd exchanged words with at his parents' parties that he was forced to attend, but his young life had essentially been solitary. Not even his brother, younger by only a year, provided any company. His brother was just life _them_. His parents. His family. Pureblood maniacs, as he referred to them. When he was feeling particularly polite.

He ran away from the lot of them when he was sixteen, and went to Prongs's house. He went home.

And then it all imploded. One of his friends, one of them men he trusted with his life, betrayed them, and the next thing anyone knew, Prongs was dead. Dead. Nothing but dirt and decay and an empty body. He was locked away for thirteen years, accused of murdering his best friend. Actually, they said he'd killed two of his friends, but that wasn't true. Wormtail had forfeited that friendship along with his innocence and the clean skin on his right arm.

When he met the boy with Prongs's face, he knew something he hadn't known even when he was a teenager. And though he was murdered only two years after his escape by his own cousin, it didn't matter. Because she wasn't his family.

In death, time has no meaning, so the two years between his death and the next major point of importance for him passed without him even noticing. Because then Moony was dead too, and he was with him and Prongs both once again.

He was with his family.

Wormtail:

The traitor.

A small, twitchy boy, with a pointed nose and mousy hair. He doesn't look like much. A wonder, really, that he was ever accepted into that group of elite. The ones who teenager secretly desires to be like. Clever, popular, good-looking, talented. He was none of these things, but they were friends with him anyway. He was grateful, delightedly surprised at his inclusion.

Yet he betrayed all of them.

His own fault, that Prongs died. His best friend, and he sold him over to the darkness. He framed Padfoot, condemned him to twelve years in Azkaban for a crime he, Wormtail, committed. Then, just to rub salt in the wound, he rejoined Lord Voldemort when he was finally found out, playing a pivotal part in his resurrection, and subsequently being at least partly responsible for the hundreds of deaths in the three years that followed.

Then finally, the silver hand, given to him by the darkness he sold his friends to, turned on him. When he attempted to kill James a second time through his son…and paused. Just for a second. That tiny twitch of mercy, of remorse, buried deep down in his soul, blackened and rotted. Crucified on the cross of his own cowardice. Murdered by his own hand because deep down, buried in his subconscious…a part of him felt he deserved it.

Maybe he wasn't quite so bad after all.

Moony:

The outcast.

To know of and understand perfectly the prejudices of the human race at eleven years old is a terrible thing. Yet this child does. He holds within him all the weariness of an adult, as well as the ruthless ferociousness of the wolf that slumbers inside him, stirring once a month, where it will rise, open its jaws, and howl.

When he first met the three who would later become his fellow Marauders, he had no idea their friendship would run so deep or last so long. He was a werewolf, and even when he was presented with something good and beautiful, all he could do was rip and destroy, because he didn't deserve it. All he deserved was the pain that had been given to him.

And, though he tried so hard to conceal it, they found out his great secret. When they told him they knew, his heart…there wasn't a word for it. _Sunk_ would be what people usually said, but that was nothing like what his had done. His heart…_stumbled_. It wasn't quite right, but it would do. It was like walking up stairs in the dark, and thinking there is one more step than there is, that moment of blind panic when your foot falls, and what should be there isn't. Again, not quite accurate to describe it, but as near as he could get.

But his friends were there. They weren't the imagined step in the dark. They were the one where you are going _down_stairs, and there's one more step than you realise. Your foot crashes into firm, solid stair and it's good, because even though you didn't expect it to be there, it is, and it holds you up.

Nine years later, his stair was destroyed. Two thirds dead, and the last third accused of their murders. And Moony was an outcast once again.

The realisation, years later, that Padfoot was innocent, and Wormtail had betrayed them, didn't come with as much shock as he thought it should have. So great was his emotional isolation, all he felt was relief. Padfoot was back, on the run maybe, but was still his friend. And that made him feel a little like he had when he was still at school.

Padfoot shouldn't die like that, he mused numbly as he watched, horrified, as his last friend fell through the veil. Padfoot should die in a more impressive way. That's not the way Padfoot would want to be dying. It was almost as bad as when he heard the news that Prongs had died, been snuffed out in a second by the Avada Kadavra curse. Those two were the loud, energetic ones. Their deaths should have been more dramatic.

While his wife was giving birth to his son, Wormtail died. Moony didn't know how he knew this, but he did, a sudden _knowing_. He was the last Marauder. The only one left. And the joy of his son's birth was tinged with the faintest undercurrents of sadness, partly for this but also partly grief for Wormtail's death. Even though he had betrayed them all, he had been his best friend for ten years, possibly the most important ten years of his life, and you couldn't just ignore that and pretend it had never happened. He knew. He had tried.

His own death was quick and painless. But that wasn't the important part. He was fighting, helping defend Hogwarts from the Death Eaters, duelling Dolohov, when he'd seen his wife come rushing towards him. So had Dolohov. His face twisting into an evil grin, he'd pointed his wand towards Nymphadora Tonks, and ended her life without a thought.

The wolf had howled.

Moony had fought the man as he had never done before. And though he died, it didn't feel like he had lost. Because he was not fighting alone. He was not alone.

He was not an outcast.

_Messrs Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs_

_Purveyors of Aids for Magical Mischief-Makers_

_Are proud to present_

_THE MARAUDERS MAP_

The Marauders, forever embalmed as they should be. Without the lies, or the treachery, or the murder or death. Just them. Before the pain. Do you see them, walking through the corridors of Hogwarts? Perhaps they are laughing at some joke Padfoot has made, or a prank they have gotten away with. Fifteen, when they created the map. Blissfully unaware then that in six years time, one of them would be murdered, one the betrayer that led to his death, one wrongly imprisoned, and one left once again alone and friendless in a world that despised him. Within twenty-two years, they would all be dead.

No, lets not tell them that. Look at them again. Really look at them. They're best friends. They are the first and last true friends any of them have ever had. Are you still looking?

Don't they look magnificent?

_Mischief managed._

A/N: Yes, more rambling from me. That's it for this fun little fic. I'm not sure whether you'll find it depressing or not. I just found it kind of heart-breaking. (Cause all my boys are dead!) But that's just me. Now, you see that button in the corner that says _Submit review_? Go on. Press it. You know you want to. I'm sure it wouldn't mind. You have to make it feel loved. And me.


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